Does NPR sanitize its reporting?

This is one of those rare instances when the correct answer to the question in a headline is ‘Probably’.

NPR has come under a lot of criticism for biased reporting. I’m not here to weigh in on that, but to present something I noticed in its coverage of the life story of John Fugelsang’s parents. NPR’s story appeared under the borderline-racy headline A Brother And Sister Get Married (And Later, Their Son Tweets It) – the actual story may have lived up to this promise, but NPR’s coverage of it did not.

Fugelsang told his father’s story in an original series of 33 tweets. NPR reproduced them in a slideshow of its own – this one of only 26. In other words, seven disappeared in the process, and I would posit that the selection was not entirely random (and given that NPR elected to run 26 of them, not entirely necessary due to the imperative of brevity, either).

To get a sense of what NPR chose to excise from Fugelsang’s story, start by checking out NPR’s version of the timeline, and then take a look at the missing tweets after the jump (admittedly, they start out relatively tame). I’ll leave any conclusions to you: